Sushi, sushi, sushi

Thursday, February 23, 2006

After eating a lot of pesce (fish), calamari, and polpo (octopus) this weekend in Sorrento, I didn't think I'd be up for eating any more pesce. But, yesterday morning we realized that it had been a long time since we last ate sushi. After I called to make reservations at Il Canapone, I couldn't help but think about it all day.

I have found a total of fourteen sushi restaruants in Florence of which only eleven are in centro (downtown): Domani, Eito, The Fusion Bar, Masa, Momoyama, Rose's, Wabi Sabi, Il Canapone, The Lounge, Porfirio Rubirosa, and Totoya. The ones that are not located in centro are Sakura, Oh Sushi!, and K.L.B.

So far, we have not found any sushi like what we are used to back in Sacramento at Mikuni Sushi, but it is very comparable to other restaurants in the US albeit a little more expensive. Of course, I'm no sushi expert; I just love it.

We enjoyed the sushi at Eito although I think to really judge a restaurant you have to go a few times. Sometimes, their specialties aren't what you would normally order. For example, I had unagi (grilled eel) maki with the unagi cut up into little pieces. I prefer unagi nigiri, which is slices of eel draped over the rice with a piece of seaweed keeping it all together. Eito was a little expensive for Florence, but I'd go back a second time to try more sushi.

We liked the sushi at Rose's a little less, but I was hoping for a little more variety. It was a little cheaper than Eito, but the ambience was also not as elegant. We were served miso soup and then a huge platter of sushi to share: maki, nigiri, and special rolls. It was good, but not exceptional.

At Il Canapone, the Japanese sushi chef creates different special rolls each week so we generally order whatever she's making that night. Last night, we ordered the Rainbow Roll and a platter of mixed sushi for our primo. Dave wanted to not eat much more, so I ordered another mixed sushi platter and we finished that up as well. I couldn't get enough wasabi although theirs seemed to be stronger than what I was used to. I generally use quite a bit of wasabi, but last night I was in tears.

I noticed that at one of the other tables, a large group of people ordered Chicken Terriyaki, Gyoza, and tonno alla pilastra (grilled tuna) first and then each one of them had a platter of sushi as the secondo.

I assume that the Florentines have now gotten a taste for sushi with the high number of restaurants in centro. I was looking for a sushi restaurant in Rome the other day and saw that the list was very, very short. In Milan, I was happy to see there were a lot of restaurants, so we might have to trek up there to eat some more sushi.

Dave and I would like to try out a few of the other sushi places in centro. It's a nice change from all the pasta that I make at home. Luckily, he loves sushi and sashimi as much as I do; however, I love the wasabi a little more than he.